Social Care
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Barbara Keeley
That is absolutely the case. In fact, in a recent meeting with Unison, I was told that, in our area in Greater Manchester, one person could be paid more for putting toppings on to pizzas at Morrisons than for providing care—often to people with dementia or to those who really need that help.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The hon. Lady talks about a squeeze in funding. On that basis, does she agree that it would be right to ask those who do have the means to contribute more towards their social care in the home?
Barbara Keeley
No, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is one of the reasons why his party’s dementia tax policy failed so badly. Suddenly to bring hundreds of thousands of people into means-testing using their homes was one of the biggest flaws in the policy that the Conservative party floated.
I will now make a little bit of progress on the state of care, because the fragility of the care sector is a key issue. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) about closures in his area, but councils cannot even influence these closures much any more because home care providers are handing back contracts. Indeed, one in five councils in the ADASS survey reported closures in all three services: home care, residential care and nursing home services. There are also serious issues of care quality in many areas of the country.
The survey reported that 70% of the councils surveyed had experienced quality issues across all three types of care services. ADASS estimates that 28,000 people have been affected by care-quality issues or by a change of service due to contracts being handed back. We know that it is a big issue for a person with dementia to have a continual change in the care staff visiting them. Those arguing in favour of cuts need to think about those 28,000 lives affected negatively by cuts to local authority budgets. Worryingly, the Care Quality Commission now reports that almost a quarter of care services are not meeting standards on safety, and nearly a fifth of services require improvement overall.
I said earlier that budget cuts mean that more than 400,000 fewer people are now getting publicly funded care. Of course, councillors, council leaders and social workers have had to make difficult decisions about cutting budgets and cutting support to local people. It is of great credit to councils and council leaders that so many still continue to prioritise adult social care in their budget setting, but the overall position is one of cuts. There will be a real-terms loss of £6.3 billion to adult social care by the end of this financial year, and we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) about the level of cuts in the city of Manchester. The cuts have an impact on staff working in social care.
Barbara Keeley
As I said earlier, I will come to our proposals; I do not want to jump around in my speech too much more.
Going back to staff working in social care, it is important to remember and think about social workers, not just care staff. A recent study found that less than half the social workers surveyed felt that decisions about a person’s care and support were being left to their professional judgment; it is now all about budgets. More than a third said that they had felt unable to get people the care they need. Less than half felt supported to have necessary difficult conversations about changes to care with people needing care and their families.
The social care crisis is a direct result of the cuts that this Government have chosen to make. The King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust estimated that there would be a funding gap in social care budgets of £1.9 billion for this year, but the extra funding in the Budget was only £1 billion, so there is still a funding gap of £900 million this year. Labour pledged an extra £1 billion for social care this year to start to deal with that funding crisis. However, the Government have chosen instead to put the pressure on local authorities and hard-pressed local council taxpayers to deal with that social crisis, which was made in Downing Street.
Delayed transfers of care due to social care cuts increased by more than a quarter in the 12 months to August this year, putting extra pressure on local councils. Now, sadly, Ministers are threatening councils with fines and further funding cuts to social care if targets for cutting delayed transfers of care cannot be met. Indeed, ADASS reported that half the social services directors it surveyed believe that their targets for delayed transfers were unrealistic. It is barely believable that the Government’s response to the social care crisis is to threaten to make the situation worse by cutting funding for social care even further. Some councils experiencing problems meeting targets were even summoned by NHS leaders last week to a meeting to review their performance challenges.
Many people have said that the approach of blaming and penalising local councils is not sustainable. The Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, Lord Porter, said of the warning letters sent from Ministers to councils:
“No council wants to see anyone stay in hospital for a day longer than necessary. These letters are hugely unhelpful at a time when local government and the NHS need to work together to tackle the health and social care crisis.”
The president of the ADASS, Margaret Willcox, has described the Government’s actions in threatening councils with further sanctions as, “frankly bizarre”. David Oliver, who is clinical vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians and a geriatric consultant, said about delayed transfers of care:
“Some of these delays are due to systematic cuts to social care budgets and provision. Others are due to a serious lack of capacity in community healthcare services…attempts to solve the problem through initiatives like the Better Care Fund or pressure from NHS England have failed”.
Interestingly, Andrea Sutcliffe, the chief inspector of social care at the Care Quality Commission, said:
“I worry that if people focus just on moving people through the system quickly then does that mean that they will force the discharge of somebody that is old and frail into a service which we have rated ‘inadequate’”.
We now have a Government who are driving the NHS to be obsessed with dealing with delayed transfers of care, seemingly above all else. This obsession causes further problems if patients are discharged without planning what they need outside hospital.
Age UK give an example that was brought to it:
“Terry’s father Richard, 85, is in hospital following a stroke. He is ready for discharge and has been assessed as needing rehabilitative care through two home visits a day. However he was then told that there are no reablement services available in his area. Terry has been told to ‘get his father out of hospital’ and to look for and fund the care himself.”
My own local hospital, Salford Royal, sadly seems to have similar issues. Last week, I spoke to a constituent who described her own discharge by saying, “I was thrown out of hospital.” Having had surgery for an infected bite that caused sepsis and a hand that she could not use, my constituent was given no discharge summary, no advice on how to manage her wound and no advice about her recovery. When she struggled to get dressed, she was told that she had to get out quickly, otherwise, “This will count as a failed discharge.” This a theme we may remember from last winter.
I remind the Minister that the British Red Cross talked then of a humanitarian crisis whereby people were sent home without clothes or into chaotic situations. Those chaotic situations involved them falling and not being found for hours, or not being washed because there were no care staff to help them. Ordering patients out of hospital when there is no reablement service for them, without advice about wounds or recovery, or to a care facility rated as inadequate just to meet unrealistic targets on delayed discharge is a recipe for an even worse crisis this winter.
Huw Merriman
The social care and hospital budgets have been merged in East Sussex, where my constituency is. As a result, the A&E is now the fastest-improved A&E department in the whole of England. That change is working. Would the hon. Lady’s local authority consider the same model?
Barbara Keeley
My local authority has the most advanced example of an integrated care organisation in the country—we have already transferred all our social care staff to work for Salford Royal. I have just quoted a situation that shows how the pressure being put on hospitals because of delayed transfers of care is causing them to treat people such as my constituent in the way I described. Conservative Members ought to listen to that, because it is their Government and their Ministers who are causing this pressure to be put on hospitals.
We know that demand on social care is increasing as more people live longer with more complex conditions. The number of people aged 75 and over is projected nearly to double by 2039. That ought to be something to celebrate, but instead the Government have created fear and uncertainty for older people by failing to address the health and care challenges raised by those demographic changes. Indeed, the Conservative party is spending less money on social care now than Labour was when it left office in 2010. The Government seem to have no plan to develop a sustainable solution to the funding of social care in the longer term; they have talked only of a consultation followed by a Green Paper.
Furthermore—and this is raising real fears—the focus has been entirely on the needs of older people, without consideration being given to the needs of the 280,000 working-age people with disabilities or learning disabilities in the social care system. That is profoundly short-sighted, because the financial pressures on local authorities due to the increasing care needs of younger adults with disabilities or mental health problems are now greater than those due to the need to support older people.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
East Sussex has the second-highest proportion of over 85-year-olds in the country, and that number is expected to grow by 14% by 2021. As for the care homes in my constituency, 55 of them are rated good, but unfortunately 29 require improvement and one is inadequate. Not only does East Sussex have a large population of people who need to be looked after, but the system is clearly not working as it should. In my constituency, 33% of the working-age population are on the living wage, so to continue to expect council tax payers to fund the social care model will not help them get on in life and will not help intergenerational fairness. I was therefore pleased to hear the Prime Minister talk at the Dispatch Box about the short-term impact of the Government’s £2 billion announced in the previous Budget and the council tax levy. However, due to the situation with council tax payers and the small tax base that I have in East Sussex, I support her when she talks about the need for medium and long-term reform.
In the medium term, East Sussex’s model is to work as a Better Together partnership, where the council, the NHS trust and clinical commissioning groups all work as one. Indeed, they are all on one email and have emailed me over the past couple of days about what can be done, which shows that they really are working together.
As I have mentioned, our accident and emergency team is the most improved in the last six months because the Better Together partnership is now working. People are now getting out of hospital earlier and, indeed, are not having the trips, slips and falls that cause them to go to A&E. The model works well.
However, I have one ask of the Minister, who has a background in compliance. The NHS trust is managed by NHS Improvement and the clinical commissioning group is managed by NHS England, and the regulators are not working together. Those organisations therefore sometimes struggle to work together, such as on billing, contractual challenge and payments, because the regulators are telling them different things. I would like a single accountable regulator for the entire sphere, and I hope that my leaders will be able to meet the Minister to discuss their challenges and what can be done.
Cross-party consensus is surely the way forward. I hope the Opposition will note that I have not once attacked them. I have heard some fantastic speeches. In particular, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) talked passionately about what we can do together. In reality, we will have no majority for these five years, and social care will be reformed only if we work together. Please, can we do so?
Valproate and Foetal Anticonvulsant Syndrome
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Norman Lamb
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and pay tribute to her for her work on the all-party group for valproate and other anti-epileptic drugs in pregnancy, and for her campaigning. Yes, the response she got from Sanofi two years ago was unacceptable. It had the effect of hiding from women the full extent of the risk. Women should be presented with the evidence so that they can have a full discussion with the clinician about what steps to take. The September 2017 survey also found that 18% of women did not know of the harm—it was not that they had not received the toolkit, but that they still did not know. The system is failing those women.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I stand here as an advocate for my constituent, Ms Carol Short, who describes her son as a 26-year-old locked in a man’s body, but unable to do much more than a 10-year-old. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is shocking, with the clinical commissioning groups and all the funding that comes from the public sector, that we still cannot get this message through? Might one solution be shorter length prescriptions, to increase the likelihood that women receive more regular advice?
Norman Lamb
That suggestion is worth exploring. There certainly should be regular reviews—discussions on the woman’s intentions about childbirth, and on the appropriateness of the treatment for that woman at that place and time.
I acknowledge an important danger. If all the focus is on the risk of valproate, there is a risk that women will simply give up and take no medication during pregnancy, and that there will be a rise in unexpected deaths through epilepsy. SUDEP Action raised that really important issue. Already, every year, 1,200 people die sudden unexpected deaths in epilepsy, and of that total SUDEP Action estimates that about 42% are avoidable. We definitely do not want any increase in that number. For me, that points to the need for all women—indeed, all people—with epilepsy to have access to specialist teams, wherever in the country they live. My worry is that access is haphazard and variable.
Last Friday I met a specialist team in Norwich. It is a very good team, and they explained to me how they have managed to reduce the use of valproate by women in the childbearing years to a very small number. They say it is only a very small subset, for whom there is no alternative. Thus they can focus all their attention on those women. They said that there is considerable variability around the country—that many women do not get access to a specialist team. I would like the Minister to commit to the publication by the Government of data for every CCG showing the level of prescribing of this medication, to enable us to pinpoint where over-prescribing is taking place.
The interesting and rather concerning point is, if those specialists that I spoke to are right that only a very small subset of women of childbearing age need to take valproate, why is it that still, of the 173,787 people with epilepsy taking valproate, 17,848 are women of childbearing age? That looks like substantial over-prescribing, which is completely contrary to the current guidance. If the guidance is clear that it should not be prescribed to women of childbearing age unless there is no alternative that is safe for the individual woman, why on earth are so many women still being prescribed this medication? It is a scandal, and the Government need to get to grips with it.
We need a holistic approach, so that women have access to specialist care and so that full consideration can be given to the right arrangements to ensure that no woman is on valproate who need not be during those years of childbearing age. Then we might start to see an end to this awful continuing scandal.
Finally, I shall outline the steps that the Government and others should take. First, the toolkit must reach everyone. It must surely be mandatory, not voluntary. Given the clear evidence from the survey of the number of women who are not getting the message, we cannot rely on the current system to work, because it is not working. As the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said, 400 affected babies have been born since it was introduced. That cannot continue; the warnings must be mandatory, along with raising awareness among GPs, pharmacists, specialists, midwives and health visitors.
Secondly, people should have an annual discussion with their GP or another health professional. The Epilepsy Society has argued that that should happen, and it is very much consistent with the valproate toolkit, which highlights the need for regular review. There should be face-to-face discussion with a health professional before the prescription is renewed.
Thirdly, all women should have access to specialist units, wherever they live. We must end this haphazard, variable position around the country, and we must address fully the concerns raised by SUDEP Action. Professor Ridsdale, a consultant who has specialised in this area of policy, says:
“A useful outcome of this exercise would be that whoever prescribes Valproate agrees to identify and provide regular advice to women and girls at risk. Better still, that policy-makers and providers start exploring how ongoing structured self-management advice might be offered to everyone with epilepsy.”
That is surely the ambition we should set.
Fourthly, we should publish the prescribing rates for valproate for every CCG. The Government say they have a commitment to openness, and this would be a good demonstration of it, because we would be able to identify where the real problems exist and where women are not getting access to good enough advice.
Fifthly, we should ensure that only those women who absolutely have to take valproate do so during their child-bearing years, in accordance with the advice, and that we end what appears to be the significant over-prescribing of this medication for such women.
Sixthly—this comes back to some of the interventions that have been made, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron)—there must be a financial support package. In a way, that comes down to the Government’s duty to these people. This has gone on for many decades, so my point is not directed just at this Government, but they have the responsibility here and now to do right by these people. There is an overwhelming moral case for them to do that, and it is not good enough for Ministers to simply say that support is available locally through local authorities or CCGs. These families have suffered an injustice, and the Government have a moral obligation to address it. If it is right for thalidomide victims, it is right for those who have lost out severely as a result of valproate. In France, a €10 million initial fund has been established, and it could be increased. The Government need to take the same step in this country.
Seventhly, there must be a statement of regret or apology for the people who have been let down by the system so very badly.
Finally, there is a case for an inquiry or a Hillsborough-style panel so that we can understand how on earth this outrageous scandal could ever have happened, how it has gone on for so many decades, letting down so many families, and what lessons can be learned to ensure that this never, ever happens again.
Oral Answers to Questions
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jackie Doyle-Price)
As I previously advised the House, I am in conversation with Together for Short Lives to look at how we improve palliative care for children. This clearly raises a different set of circumstances and sensitivities, and it is essential that we do our best for these children.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Do Ministers have any plans to review the “do not resuscitate” guidance for hospitals? I have a constituent who has such an order placed on him, despite the fact that he has left hospital and is in a care home, it cannot be rescinded and his family have not consented.
Jackie Doyle-Price
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. Certainly, in CQC inspections in the past, the whole issue of “do not resuscitate” orders has been an area of concern. This is something we will very much look at as part of the end of life policy, but I would like to hear more about the case my hon. Friend mentioned, if he would like to write to me.
Oral Answers to Questions
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
I recognise the very strong arguments my hon. Friend makes and the strong campaigning he does on behalf of his constituents. We are waiting for the final recommendations to come from his local CCG, but I agree that too often we have closed beds in the NHS when we do not have alternative capacity in the community, and we need to be very careful not to repeat that mistake.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The cost of presenting with a minor ailment at a pharmacy is only 10% of the cost of presenting at A&E. What more can be done to help persuade those who present themselves to A&E that the pharmacy sector could be a better use of their time?
Mr Hunt
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on that. Despite the current debates, the pharmacy sector has a very bright future, and we have set up a £40 million integration fund precisely to help pharmacists to play more of a role in the NHS and, in particular, to reduce pressure on A&Es.
Oral Answers to Questions
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
We have committed, and the Prime Minister affirmed the commitment only last month, to spend £1 billion more every year on mental health services, but we recognise that it is not just about money. It is also about having a proper suicide prevention plan—we have updated the plan—and making sure that, across the NHS, we properly investigate and learn from avoidable deaths. That is why, following the tragedy of what happened at Southern Health, we have now started a big new programme—the first of its kind in the world—whereby every trust will publish its number of avoidable deaths quarterly.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Mr Hunt
I join my hon. Friend in doing that. It is really important, contrary to what the former shadow Health Secretary, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), says, that we praise NHS staff when they do remarkable things. There is a lot of pressure everywhere in the NHS, and praising NHS staff is not being self-congratulatory; it is recognising when a good job is being done.
NHS and Social Care Funding
Huw Merriman Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
We need to look afresh at the entire health and social care pathway, which is why I am delighted to be able to contribute today. From visiting the pharmacist, to attending a GP appointment, to spending time in hospital, whether planned or through A&E, to being able to reside beforehand and afterwards at home or in a care home, we need to find the most efficient and dignified way to treat and look after people. We must avoid using one treatment centre as a default option—that is not the best option either for the individual or for the public purse—because it is the only one available owing to difficulties with individual funding pots, opening hours or lack of access to better forms of provision. We must also be encouraged to speak freely about the pressures in the system and to provide ideas. It has frustrated me for years that anyone who thinks aloud about ideas that could change health and social care for the better is denigrated as seeking to harm it when the opposite is true.
To that end, I listened with interest to the Secretary of State’s interview on Radio 4 on Monday morning. It struck me as measured and thoughtful about new ideas. I was particularly interested in the suggestion about how we could deliver more capacity in the GP system, because an increasing number of people attending A&E are neither accident victims nor in need of emergency treatment; they do, however, need some form of medical intervention, as the Secretary of State mentioned. It was then thoroughly depressing to read the Secretary of State’s words taken out of context. I hope that he will continue to think outside the box and that all Members will recognise the benefits of his so doing.
Speaking of ideas, I have the following suggestions for each of the treatment centres in the health pathway, starting with pharmacies. In the event that we have too many pharmacy clusters, I completely agree with the need to ensure that they are spread out across the country, with the money saved being recycled. At the same time, we should find ways to help pharmacies deliver more interventions to free up capacity at GP surgeries. We must do more to signpost patients to pharmacies before they go to their GP. A recent report costed common ailment treatment in community pharmacies at £29 a patient. The cost rises to £82 for GP practices and to £147 for A&E. Treatment results across all three were equally good. The research estimated that 5% of GP consultations for common ailments could be managed by community pharmacies, equating to more than 18 million GP consultations that could be diverted.
I was buoyed by the Secretary of State’s suggestion that more GPs should be placed in A&E departments and in care homes. The new NHS pilot requiring GPs to undertake weekly ward rounds in care homes is the right type of thinking to prevent emergency treatment in our hospitals. I welcome GP surgeries opening on Sundays, but surely only one surgery in each area needs to be open. I do not believe that having all GP surgeries open seven days a week is a good use of scarce resources, in the same way that Government funding of two pharmacies across the road from each other is not a good use of such resources.
I have long taken the view that we need to find ways to free up our GPs’ time, so that they can focus on the patients who need them most. There are too many wasted or cancelled appointments because the service is free. If there was a cost to unjustifiably failing to keep an appointment, it may demonstrate how precious this resource is—just as NHS dentists would charge for a missed appointment when I was younger.
Some of the reforms of pharmacies and GPs are designed to ensure that patients only attend A&E if they have had an accident or in an emergency, which is clearly not the case for some who are now attending. We are also facing demand for hospital places because of a need to reform the way we look after an ageing population.
Time does not allow me to talk about social care, which is so important in my constituency, but the Government’s delivery of more social care funding before Christmas is welcome. However, it is crucial that we question the operating model in social care. The NHS benefits from a national funding programme, but social care is largely the responsibility of local authorities and local rate payers in areas where retirement rates may be high but employment and council tax receipts are not. We have to think radically to ensure that we get the best out of our health and social care system. To do so will not only make resources stretch further but will deliver innovation that improves the lives of the sick and infirm, who are most in need of our care.
Social Care
Huw Merriman Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Mr Hunt
I am more than happy to work with people of all parties to come to a sensible consensus. The one thing that unites all the major parties is a commitment to the NHS and social care system. With respect to the other issues, it is not just about rooting out poor care. It is also about something that the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South mentioned earlier—giving a career structure to people who work in the care system and giving them recognition. That is why in April last year we introduced the care certificate, which is based on achieving 15 standards. It is a voluntary system, but the CQC inspects against it, so there is a strong incentive for care providers to get their staff enrolled for the care certificate. I pay tribute to the work done by Camilla Cavendish, who did a lot of thinking and had a long-standing interest in this issue in her time as a journalist and at No. 10, and on whose proposals we are basing our work in this area.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I am grateful that my right hon. Friend has mentioned the CQC and also touched on wages. When I met the south-east director of the CQC, it was clear that there is an issue of staff not being paid properly and then moving around the care home sector for a small amount of extra money, which is vital to them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the living wage will stop that occurring and result in more people staying in jobs for longer?
Mr Hunt
That is a very important point. We have heard suggestions that the Government have been about words, not action, but the national living wage will do an enormous amount to help keep people in jobs for longer and help them to start to think about their jobs as a career, with potential progression into other parts of the health and care system, such as nursing. I commend my hon. Friend for the work that he does on this in Sussex.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
My constituency has one of the highest rates of over-65-year-olds. They comprise 28% of my constituents, compared with the national average of just 17%. Indeed, the town of Bexhill has more 85-year-olds per head of population than any other part of the UK. Given those statistics, adult social care is a key driver in the success of our local public services. Not only is it directly relevant to the wellbeing of many of my elderly constituents, but it determines the ability of all my constituents to gain rapid access to their hospital and GP. It also determines the amount of money that is diverted away from other local public services, such as education and transport.
I want to touch on two issues where there is more to do to improve social care. First, of 35 care homes in my constituency that have been rated by the CQC, none has been rated outstanding and only six have been rated good. The remainder require improvement or are inadequate, and they have six months to turn performance around or they may be closed. If our local schools were failing in the same way, there would be outrage. That our often vulnerable residents, who are often without a voice, are being subject to that standard is a national disgrace that I do not believe should be tolerated, and I welcome the Government’s tougher approach to the inspection regime.
Having met the CQC to get behind the reason for the failure of those inspections, I believe that much of it is down to the design of care home buildings, many of which, because of their age, cannot easily be adapted from traditional residential homes for the elderly into modern care facilities. More people can use technology to enable them to stay in their own homes, so care homes tend to have a higher proportion of patients who have complex health needs.
Many homes are failing CQC inspections because they cannot demonstrate that they can evacuate residents in an emergency, and they do not have the right spatial design to keep residents active and engaged. The state of our care homes means that not only do residents not have the best wellbeing, but when individuals have to stay in hospital, authorities may be unable to discharge them back to care homes because no places are available if those homes are failing the inspection regime and are thus out of bounds. That leads to bed shortages in hospitals and to expensive longer stays.
There is an alternative. I recently attended the opening of a new state-of-the-art apartment block in Bexhill that offers shared ownership and rentals to the over-60s, some of whom are local authority-supported. Residents live independently and share in-house restaurants and amenities, which are also open to the public. For younger residents, it feels like any other smart apartment block with its mod cons. Crucially, however, the building offers facilities and care packages, so that as residents get older, they can access care but remain in their apartments. They can arrive at 60, and the design allows them to remain there for life. It is an excellent model for the future, but it was possible only because our county and district councils provided land and funding for our amazing housing association, AmicusHorizon, to build out.
Across our constituencies, land is being developed for housing. Every developer is required to provide infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries and other public amenities. Care homes are private businesses, however, so there is no requirement to provide them. Since 50% of our care home patients are funded by the state, I suggest to Ministers that they fold in a requirement for developers to provide land or section 106 moneys to enable housing authorities and care companies to deliver the innovative new accommodation that will take people to their last days. Such accommodation should be part of the design as much as a school or a GP surgery is.
The second issue pertains to the joining up of our NHS and local authority social care providers. Much has been made of sustainability and transformation plans and of integrating adult social care and clinical care. I therefore congratulate East Sussex County Council and our NHS team in East Sussex, which have recognised that the £200 million of savings required from the STP and the delivery of a better care package can be better achieved if they join up and work together. Their “Better Together” project is designed, in their words, to
“spend £850m wisely, not saving £200m badly.”
To deliver that programme, our local team is implementing a single point for health professionals to access support, integrating social and community care under one management structure, offering frailty practitioner support for the over-75s for early intervention and putting prevention teams together for high-risk members of our community. The results thus far have being encouraging for adult social care: the number of clients going under early intervention watch has increased by 20%; early intervention has kept people out of hospital; 77% of clients have remained at home following early intervention; and there has been a notable reduction in the number of falls. I highlight those issues because they are key drivers for the improvement of social care.
The delivery by the Government of an extra £3.5 billion is welcome. However, it is crucial that we question the operating model in social care. To do so will not only make resources stretch further, but deliver the ideas and innovation that will improve the lives of those who rely on social care in their latter years.
Community Pharmacies
Huw Merriman Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Jonathan Ashworth
My hon. Friend is right, and Government Ministers, including the Health Secretary even on Monday, justify these as part of a package of efficiencies. Indeed when I raised this a few months ago with the previous Minister, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, he told me in correspondence that these cuts were necessary as part of delivering the £22 billion-worth of efficiency savings. So this is more proof that when they talk of efficiency savings, they are actually talking of cuts to frontline services.
Jonathan Ashworth
I am sorry, but I need to make progress.
The NHS is going through the worst financial crisis in its 68-year history. Even the previous Health Secretary, who is now in the other place, said he did not expect another five years of such tight budgets for the NHS.
The black hole in hospital finances last year was £2.45 billion. Under Labour, we spent the European average on health as a proportion of GDP; we are now spending less than Greece. We are seeing a huge financial squeeze on the NHS and the cuts are part of that squeeze agenda.
We want the Government to think again on the cuts, because they will lead to more pressures on GP surgeries and A&E departments. There is a consensus not just among the Labour party, but among our constituents, the sector, clinicians and indeed Conservative Members against the cuts. It is Ministers who stand outside that consensus. The hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) has said:
“It does not make sense that we are encouraging pharmacies to take on a bigger role in the NHS, while potentially reducing the number of them.”
The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) has said:
“I do not think this 4% cut is a wise move.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 974.]
The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) said
“when our A&Es are under so much pressure, we need community pharmacies”.—[Official Report, 17 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 598.]
I agree and our message to Conservative Members who want to stand up for their constituents and who have been lobbied by pharmacists is, “Join us in the Division Lobbies and get Ministers to think again on these damaging cuts.” I commend the motion to the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “NHS services” to the end of the Question and add:
“welcomes the Government’s proposals to further integrate community pharmacy into the NHS, including through the Pharmacy Integration Fund, and make better use of pharmacists’ clinical expertise, including investing £112 million to deliver a further 1,500 pharmacists in general practice by 2020; supports the need to reform the funding system to ensure better value for the taxpayer; and welcomes the establishment of a Pharmacy Access Scheme which will ensure all patients in all parts of the country continue to enjoy good access to a local community pharmacy.”.
I welcome the opportunity to set out again the Government’s approach to pharmacy in general and community pharmacy in particular over the next few years. I will also address some of the points that we just heard, which were, frankly, alarmist scare-mongering.
The proposals I announced two weeks ago are directed at four main areas: first, the need to better integrate pharmacy with GPs, primary care and the NHS more widely; secondly, the need for the existing community pharmacy network to move from a dispensing-based model to a value-added services-based model; thirdly, the need to continue to work with NHS England to ensure value for every penny we spend on the NHS; and fourthly, the need to ensure that, as we undertake these reforms, everybody in the country continues to have ready access to a community pharmacy.
First, on integration with the NHS, especially in general practice, over the weekend Simon Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, again reiterated the importance of that and why he supports this process. We know we need to expand the number of GPs, and by 2020 we will have a further 5,000 doctors working in this area, but as well as recruiting and retaining more doctors, we need to provide them with further support. The “General Practice Forward View”, published by NHS England, has set out fully costed plans to recruit a further 1,500 clinical pharmacists into GP practices by 2020. By then there will be one pharmacist working within a GP practice for every 30,000 of population. Most of these will be prescribing pharmacists, and all will have a role in performing medicine reviews and leveraging GP time. This is a major investment and it is already happening.
Huw Merriman
The point I wanted to make when trying to intervene on the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) was that I recently went to a pharmacy in my town of Bexhill, and it is making deliveries to every single customer who asks for a delivery, not just the vulnerable and the elderly. It does so because if it did not Lloyds would put it out of business. Does the Minister agree that that shows that there are efficiencies to be made, and the fact that those efficiencies are recycled in the health service has got to be good for all our constituents?
David Mowat
It does show that. This is a competitive business. My hon. Friend mentions Lloyds; it is one of the two big players in this industry, in which two players own 30% of all pharmacies.
Young People’s Mental Health
Huw Merriman Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron)—I hope I have got that correct.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. It is pronounced “Stray-ven and Lez-ma-hay-go”.
Huw Merriman
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am suitably corrected and admonished at the same time. I am glad that you did not ask me to repeat that after you.
I particularly applaud the point that has been made about making this a cross-party matter on which we can all work together. As the young people have shown us in their fantastic report, working together will help to ensure that all voices are heard and recognised.
I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes)—her constituency is much easier for me to pronounce—for sponsoring the debate. I apologise for going back and forth from the Chamber, and perhaps I may explain to those who are watching why there are so few MPs on the Benches. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said that it would be good to hold such debates during Government time, when Members may not be in their constituencies. Of course, Thursday afternoon is also a time when Bill Committees sit, so Government and Opposition Members are required to attend those Committees. I hasten to add that I should also be in a Bill Committee, but I was so determined to speak on this matter that I have come to the Chamber. It is probably for that reason that I will always be asking Ministers for more from the Back Benches, rather than being on the Front Bench and able to deliver those things myself.
I commend the 2015 Youth Select Committee report, and I particularly applaud the 90,000 young people—many more took part in the vote—who voted that mental health services for young people should be the priority concern. They are absolutely right to focus on this subject, and I submit that they are in the best position to give their opinion on it.
I similarly decided that the subject would be a chief priority for me when I was elected as an MP in East Sussex 18 months ago. The severity of this issue, particularly among young people, became all too apparent to me. I found—I still do—the stories of carefree, confident and happy lives being shut down as young people enter a dark world of fear, anxiety and isolation to be incredibly upsetting.
As a result of my concern, I chose this issue as the topic of my question when my name was first pulled out of the hat for Prime Minister’s questions. I told the then Prime Minister that I had spent an afternoon in the small town of Battle in my constituency visiting three families, each of whom had a child who had not been given the early-stage intervention that they expected from the child and adolescent mental health services. I asked the Prime Minister for more focus on early-stage treatment so that young people’s conditions do not become more acute.
Providing such services is not only our civic duty, but an economic and social imperative. When my constituents ask me why the roads in East Sussex are in a state, I explain that I recently secured £250,000 from our county team to fund just one year of acute mental health treatment for one constituent. Fixing people has to come before fixing holes in the tarmac. The phenomenon may not have existed so openly when many of my constituents were younger, but it is now a huge financial concern to my county council colleagues.
I firmly believe that too much pressure is being loaded on to people too young. Social media and the internet, as pioneering as they are, are a curse on wellbeing, and internet service providers must be forced to do more. Every young person should have the right to have their web history expunged. Cyber-bullying is at last being recognised as a crime, but every school must ensure that its pupils are aware of good internet practice and the sanctions for abuse. We also need to be aware that young people and children are accessing graphic images and media on the internet that they cannot understand, process or cope with.
In the report’s consideration of education, I absolutely commend the recommendation
“that the Government develop and introduce statutory levels of attainment for mental health education…Schools should have autonomy to deliver mental health education flexibly but must be able to demonstrate how pupils reach the attainment levels.”
May I suggest that in so doing the Government should ensure that the curriculum combines a consideration of social media and the internet with wellbeing training?
We also need training for our GPs. The situation is summed up perfectly by the experience of a young person that is detailed in paragraph 32 of the excellent report. It is essential that the GP does not diagnose a mental health condition, but merely refers the young person to a specialist. I know that mental health specialists find it frustrating if GPs diagnose a mental health condition when the specialist does not regard it as such. Once that badge is given to someone, it is difficult to remove it. Equally, brilliant local GPs, such as those in Battle who have helped my constituents in their surgeries, have championed young people and become their advocate. They are incredibly frustrated by the delay in early intervention in mental health services. I work closely with my local CAMHS team, and I have the highest regard for the many excellent specialists who do their best. However, I am worried that constituents face lengthy waiting times and that some have been passed from pillar to post when receiving treatment.
Building up trust is a key ingredient of successful diagnosis and treatment. I hear stories about young people finding the courage and trust to open up about their condition, only to find a new practitioner at the subsequent session. It disappoints me that the young person can then regress because of that change of personnel. I would like a commitment to giving treatment on a fixed one-to-one basis. If we can do that for maternity provision, surely we can do it for mental health treatment.
When I attended the launch of the mental health taskforce, I was buoyed by the commitment of the then Minister and the chief executive of NHS England to implement the excellent “Five Year Forward View”. I was cheered by the commitment to funds to ensure that our acute hospitals have adequate mental health expertise on A&E wards to deal with those who are hospitalised as a result of mental health issues, or who have such a condition in addition to a physical illness.
My concern was driven by the experience of a family in my constituency following a suicide attempt. The NHS staff did not have the ability to deal with the mental health condition, and my constituent, a young man in his teens, was forced to wait until CAMHS staff could make their way over from another town miles away. I understand the need for specialist treatment, but it strikes me that there is a need for a culture change across the entire NHS, and that all staff should be trained to understand mental health and provide a basic level of treatment. Specialisation in health is important, but if the NHS becomes over-specialised, it can lead to a lack of general involvement in such care for patients.
I welcome the news that the Government will fund 24/7 mental health provision in our hospitals, but I was alarmed at the suggestion by the chief executive of my local trust that the funding may not stretch far enough. I also want to ensure that that specific coverage will not mean that other NHS staff with the necessary technical understanding and empathy will feel that they are not empowered to assist those many hospital patients who need help with their mental healthcare, in addition to their physical wellbeing.
Ultimately, getting early-stage intervention right is a key part of achieving a proper diagnosis for people with a mental health condition. We should not misdiagnose young people who are suffering growing pains and need the coaching and guidance of family and friends to overcome the problems of adolescence. However, I have met too many young children who face a difficult future because their mental health condition was not treated at an early stage. Funding mental health treatment is a most important investment, not only for people’s welfare and wellbeing, but to enable these amazing young people to fulfil their hopes and dreams in their careers, and to make something of themselves and their country.
I applaud the amazing work of all of those in the British Youth Council, many of whom live in my county of East Sussex, who have done so much to produce this excellent report. Those young people are leading the charge to ensure that the nation supports all those who are affected by this terrible condition. We owe it to them, and to all young people, to deliver a better mental health service, and many of the report’s recommendations will do just that.
Wes Streeting
It really does. One of the things that concerns me most about young people’s poor experience of mental health services—this was reflected at the discussion by the all-party group—is that it is not just GPs and headteachers who recognise that young people are being failed and turned away; young people themselves recognise that. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a young person who is suffering from anxiety, depression or another form of mental ill health, who knows they have a problem, seeks help and is left to feel ignored, dismissed and unsupported. I have mentioned the proportion of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people who are affected, and it is even higher for trans young people.
I represent a constituency that is highly diverse ethnically and religiously. It worries me that Asian communities seem to be far less likely to seek access to mental health services. There is a job to do there to tackle stigma and to make the services more accessible. People from African-Caribbean communities face inequality. The failures of public policy on African-Caribbean people should shame our country. It is a further indictment that the majority of African-Caribbean people who come into contact with the mental health system seem to do so through the criminal justice system. That is a terrible state of affairs. Therefore, the issue of access and support is crucial if we are to deal with the problem.
This is partly about funding. We have had a good-natured debate this afternoon, so I do not say this to be objectionable or churlish, but on Wednesday, three or four Members on both sides of the House raised the issue of mental health with the Prime Minister, and her response was, to put it politely, inadequate. Beyond general statements about parity of esteem, she seemed unable to point to any meaningful actions her Government were taking on the issue of mental health.
I am sure that the Minister has come better briefed this afternoon, but the Prime Minister also needs to make this a priority. Much of this is about joined-up government—this will be a theme of mine this afternoon—and that requires leadership from the centre. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to be sure-footed, although wrong-headed, when it comes to home affairs issues, but completely blind-sided on issues outside her comfort zone. We need stronger leadership on mental health from her and I was genuinely disappointed with what we saw during Prime Minister’s questions this week.
Parity of esteem is not about sentiment—it is about resources. About 11% of the NHS budget is spent on mental health and just 6.36% of that 11% is spent on children’s mental health. I recognise that the Government have made a commitment to invest £1.4 billion in child mental health in the next five years, and I welcome that, but I urge the Government to ensure that that funding is delivered sooner rather than later. Locally—other Members have referred to this—budgets are being cut or frozen in three in four mental health trusts. Seven in 10 CCGs and local authorities are freezing their budgets because of pressures from central Government reductions. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) has, through written parliamentary questions, highlighted that decisions coming down the track will make that picture even worse.
In the London Borough of Redbridge, the council is doing fantastic work with limited resources. However, I can say from first-hand experience—I declare an interest as an elected member of the council—that local government cuts are biting. The picture is compounded by the state of our local health economy. Both our NHS trusts are in special measures, although I hope one of them will be leaving special measures sooner rather than later. I hope that they will both leave, but I suspect one is nearer to the end of that journey than the other. Primary care is creaking, it is fair to say that our clinical commissioning group is struggling, and our community health trust has a rating that requires improvement. The challenge for Redbridge is not simply the funding reductions that affect my borough, but the fact that the funding formula does not lead to a settlement for Redbridge—for the local authority and for the wider health economy—that genuinely reflects the needs of our population. I urge the Minister to look carefully at how Redbridge has been disadvantaged through the funding formula, particularly in public health funding, and at what can be done.
Huw Merriman
I do not wish to get into a skirmish on funding, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as in my area of East Sussex, the way to find the efficiency savings that the NHS is required to make, in addition to the £10 billion that this Government have put in, is to have a “better together” organisation so that hospitals and all the other healthcare providers—at county level and so on—can talk together? That would not only save money, but mean that everyone is joined up, which is the way forward on such issues, as he has rightly said.
Wes Streeting
I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He has anticipated some of my closing remarks about looking to the future. I will have some positive words to say about the direction of Government policy in that respect.
This issue is not simply about funding, but about leadership and accountability. I must say that the damning CQC report on the Brookside unit in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) has more than raised eyebrows. Some of its judgments about this facility for children’s mental health provision were:
“The ward environments were not safe, clean or suited to the care of children and young people… The wards were not adequately staffed… There was a high usage of restraint and rapid tranquilisation at the unit… The ethos of the unit was containment rather than therapy… Care plans reviewed were not recovery orientated and more behaviour orientated… During the inspection we saw staff refuse to facilitate the requests of young people… Young people stated the food was of poor quality and cultural and religious foods were not available”—
and those who know the London Borough of Redbridge will know how totally inappropriate that is. My question for the North East London NHS Foundation Trust is very simple: why did it take a damning inspection by the Care Quality Commission for sufficient action to be taken? From what I can see and from my conversations with colleagues in the local authority, there is clearly a road to improvement. It should not take inspectors coming in to highlight the fact that we have failed some of our most vulnerable young people in such a gross and unforgivable way.
Among my worst experiences as a constituency MP—these are universally my worst experiences—are in my surgeries on Friday afternoons when I see absolutely awful cases of people who have been very badly failed by public services. One case I will never forget was that of Simon Harris, a young man—he was 30 years old—who was failed by Goodmayes hospital because he was insufficiently cared for. While under the care of the NHS, he was allowed to take his own life, although he was in the very place that his family thought would keep him safe. I never again want to have a conversation with a constituent like the one I had with his incredibly stoic and courageous grandmother, Brenda. That is the consequence of mental health failure: it is simply the difference between life and death. I do not think that young people like Simon should ever be failed in such a way by the services that are there to keep them safe and well.
This subject is not just about public service provision, but about celebrating the work done by the voluntary sector. In the past year, I have visited a number of programmes in my constituency. I have visited Audacious Veg, a social enterprise that involves helping people suffering from mental ill health to set up their own social enterprise, growing and selling vegetables. This wonderful project runs in conjunction with the Forest Farm Peace Garden, another environmental and sustainability project, which gets people with mental ill health outside, interacting with others and active.
I cannot commend strongly enough to the Minister the importance of social prescribing. Here, public policy has a role to play. When Redbridge Youth Council, for example, commissioned the Redbridge Drama Centre to design and deliver a play on mental health to reach young people, 5,000 young people and counting across the London Borough of Redbridge were reached by that fantastic way of engaging young people in conversations about mental health.
Music can play a powerful role in therapy, as can sport. One of the most impressive projects I have visited in the past 12 months was Coping With Football, sponsored by the London Playing Fields Foundation and run in conjunction with the North East London Foundation Trust. Again, that project got young people outside, interacting and developing their skills and, most importantly, their self-esteem.
That brings me on to looking to the future, and I will press the Minister to take policy in a few directions. I have asked her to look at Redbridge’s funding formula, on public health in particular, and I hope she will undertake to do so. I also ask her to work with her colleagues in Government to think about funding nationally. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle talked about the value of joining up services locally, in particular local government and the NHS. I commend the approach being taken by the Government through the introduction of the accountable care organisations. In the pilot with Redbridge, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and the London Borough of Havering, that approach is bringing the local authority together with stakeholders from across the local health economy to join up public service provision. That will bear fruit.
We also need joined-up Government nationally, however. Other Members have made a compelling case for the Minister to fight her corner in public health, because investment in public health and early intervention is a money saver—and not just across Government; within her own Department we can reduce A&E admissions and the pressure on urgent and primary care if we get public health funding right.
The Minister also needs to make the case, along with the Secretary of State, across Government. For example, it is no good the Treasury making cuts to local government if that leads to cuts in public health funding and undermines the work of the Department of Health. It is no use cutting mental health provision if that leads to a spike in crime, an increase in the prison population and greater demand on the criminal justice system.
In education, it is no good asking Ofsted to inspect schools on mental health provision if school referrals to CAMHS are going unheard. We need to make sure the services are there to support schools. We also cannot continue with the postcode lottery on sex and relationships education and personal, social and health education. I hope we can revisit the issue of compulsory SRE and PSHE.
Finally, and most importantly—it is the reason we are here this afternoon—I urge the Minister and her colleagues in Government to listen to young people. That she is here this afternoon shows the importance the Government place on this report and the views of young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood talked about the importance of co-production and involving young people in the design of public services, and that is absolutely critical. But the Youth Select Committee has made a whole series of other recommendations that deserve not just the serious attention of this House but the response of Government. If that happens, we will get better public policy, and, I hope, we will have a generation of young people whose voices have not just been heard but, most importantly, listened to.
Junior Doctors Contract
Huw Merriman Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hunt
The way patients have suffered—there have been over 20,000 cancelled operations during this process—has been very disappointing. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to campaign on issues of hygiene and cleanliness, which lead to so many tragedies when they are not properly attended to. I hope we can move on now. I do believe that, despite the disappointing rejection of this deal in the ballot, some trust has been established between the leaders of the BMA and the Government, and we have had a productive dialogue. We have made a number of changes to the May contract since announcing it—things that they suggested and that we agreed to. I would like to continue that process and build that trust.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Having been somewhat of a burden on the NHS myself over the months as a result of playing football—unsuccessfully—with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) in December, I spent an hour on the day of the all-out strike talking to the junior doctors who treated me. They asked me if I could tell the Secretary of State and the BMA that there is a need and a desire for more talks. May I thank the Secretary of State for showing flexibility? He does a difficult job extremely well, and it is appreciated on the Government Benches. I am absolutely saddened that a deal on this contract has not been brokered in the way we thought it would in May. Will he ensure that those junior doctors who move on to this contract are made well aware of how unpopular the previous contract was in the medical profession and that this contract’s terms are well sold so that junior doctors are reassured about them?
Mr Hunt
I am more than happy to do that. I think that the vast majority of junior doctors think that what has happened is a tragedy and are keen to move on. I hope they take seriously my assurances this afternoon that we will be monitoring every stage of the implementation of this contract, and if there are further things that we can improve, we will do exactly that, because we want a contract that is good for them and good for patients.